Tim Leeds Havre Daily News tleeds@havredailynews.com
The Liberty County Medical Center in Chester is looking for support from the state and from around the country in an uphill battle to help it win a state-of-the art diagnostic tool it would find virtually impossible to get otherwise. The hospital has entered an online contest at www.winanmri.com sponsored by Siemens Medical Solutions to win a magnetic resonance imaging device for diagnosing and monitoring treatment of patients. “This new MRI system could really improve the level of care we’re able to offer this community,” Ron Gleason, CEO at Liberty County Medical Center, said in a press release. “Now we need everyone to visit this Web site and vote for our video.” In the contest, hospitals with 180 or fewer beds enter a video telling why their hospital should win the MRI. People going to the Web site can cast their vote for which hospital should win after viewing its video. The Chester hospital was ahead of more than half the entries this morning, but far short of the top vote-getter. “MRI Barn Raising,” the video produced by a class at Chester- Joplin-Inverness High School, had 6,341 viewings and 1,975 votes, putting it at No. 20 out of 48 videos submitted. The top five videos on the site had more than 10,000 votes, leaving the Chester hospital a long way to go. The top video, submitted by Sumter Regional Hospital in Americus, Ga., had 58,701 views and 30,688 votes. The last day for hospitals to submit videos for the contest is Nov. 30, and the last day to vote is Dec. 31. According to the site, each computer is allowed only one vote each day. Multiple votes will be tracked and eliminated. The hospital staff has asked people to pass the word on to others to “vote early and vote often.” The Chester video likens the contest as a “barn-building of a new era.” The community coming together to win an MRI, as it had to to raise barns and to help members of the community in the past, could help people along the Hi-Line and in southern Alberta receive top-quality diagnosis without having to drive possibly hundreds of miles to have access to the technology. An MRI uses a magnetic field, radio waves and a computer to produce images of organs, soft tissue, bone, blood vessels and arteries and virtually any other internal body structures. The images can then be used for diagnosis of illnesses including cancer, coronary artery disease and heart problems, lesions of the liver and other organs, and other problems. “This MRI system will give us the ability to treat patients that we never could have treated in Chester before,” said Dr. Anna Earl. “A system like this will help us expand the services we provide to our patients. Both patients and physicians across the entire Hi-Line will have much easier access to some of the best medical technology that exists on the market today.”
